Evidence layer
Probative surfaces brought into scope by this page
This page does more than point to governance files. It is also anchored to surfaces that make observation, traceability, fidelity, and audit more reconstructible. Their order below makes the minimal evidence chain explicit.
- 01Response authorizationQ-Layer: response legitimacy
- 02Weak observationQ-Ledger
- 03Derived measurementQ-Metrics
- 04AttestationQ-Attest protocol
Q-Layer: response legitimacy
/response-legitimacy.md
Surface that explains when to answer, when to suspend, and when to switch to legitimate non-response.
- Makes provable
- The legitimacy regime to apply before treating an output as receivable.
- Does not prove
- Neither that a given response actually followed this regime nor that an agent applied it at runtime.
- Use when
- When a page deals with authority, non-response, execution, or restraint.
Q-Ledger
/.well-known/q-ledger.json
Public ledger of inferred sessions that makes some observed consultations and sequences visible.
- Makes provable
- That a behavior was observed as weak, dated, contextualized trace evidence.
- Does not prove
- Neither actor identity, system obedience, nor strong proof of activation.
- Use when
- When it is necessary to distinguish descriptive observation from strong attestation.
Q-Metrics
/.well-known/q-metrics.json
Derived layer that makes some variations more comparable from one snapshot to another.
- Makes provable
- That an observed signal can be compared, versioned, and challenged as a descriptive indicator.
- Does not prove
- Neither the truth of a representation, the fidelity of an output, nor real steering on its own.
- Use when
- To compare windows, prioritize an audit, and document a before/after.
Q-Attest protocol
/.well-known/q-attest-protocol.md
Optional specification that cleanly separates inferred sessions from validated attestations.
- Makes provable
- The minimal frame required to elevate an observation toward a verifiable attestation.
- Does not prove
- Neither that an attestation endpoint exists nor that an attestation has already been received.
- Use when
- When a page deals with strong proof, operational validation, or separation between evidence levels.
Complementary probative surfaces (1)
These artifacts extend the main chain. They help qualify an audit, an evidence level, a citation, or a version trajectory.
AI changelog
/changelog-ai.md
Public log that makes AI surface changes more dateable and auditable.
In an interpreted web, the challenge is no longer only to publish information. It is to reduce the distortion between what is published and what probabilistic systems reconstruct from partial signals. A recurring confusion appears here: observation is mistaken for proof.
Q-Ledger is designed precisely to avoid that confusion. It deliberately produces weak proof: structured, chained, archivable, but non-attestative.
Why observation remains weak proof
An edge-derived observation only describes what was seen during a defined window. Caching, filtering, access asymmetries, and agent variation make visibility incomplete. The value of Q-Ledger is not to prove identity or authority, but to make a minimum fact harder to erase: an entrypoint was observed as consulted, on specific dates, in a chained sequence.
What observation allows
- documenting that machine-first entrypoints were observed as consulted;
- following a continuity across dated snapshots;
- making silent modifications harder to hide when chaining and archive exist.
What observation does not allow
- proving the identity of the emitter;
- proving intent, compliance, or responsibility;
- proving total completeness of what happened.
Why attestation is a separate layer
Attestation belongs to a different discipline: signature, cryptographic proof, explicit accountability, and a trust chain. Q-Ledger does not replace that layer. It prepares a minimum publication surface that a future attestation layer could rely on.
The mistake to avoid
If observation is confused with attestation, weak signals are over-read as strong commitments. The point of governance is the opposite: make the limits explicit so that unjustified certainty cannot be reconstructed automatically.
Why weakness is a feature, not a flaw
Q-Ledger is deliberately weak because a weak observational claim can remain honest. It says what was seen, when it was seen, and through which bounded artefacts. It does not claim more than that. In a governance stack, that discipline is a strength: it keeps observation and attestation from being confused.
Closing note
In this architecture, weak observation is preferable to strong but unjustified attestation. That asymmetry is deliberate and protective.